


Rabbit Hunters

by ConnivingOphelia



Category: Princess Bride (1987), The Princess Bride - William Goldman
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Animal Abuse, Animal Death, Blow Jobs, Implied/Referenced Torture, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, M/M, Masochism, Painplay, Sadism, Torture, Underage Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-28
Updated: 2017-04-28
Packaged: 2018-10-24 20:36:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10749351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ConnivingOphelia/pseuds/ConnivingOphelia
Summary: Count Rugen's new Machine is ready for testing.  Humperdinck is there to help.  For science.





	Rabbit Hunters

_Now, where is that goddamned secret knot?_ Prince Humperdinck runs his hand across the veiny bark, down the woodgrain that flows like a rocky river around the protruding bulges of the misshapen trunk. He prods three of the decoys, then a fourth, before he finally locates it. The knot depresses beneath his hand as the secret door grinds open. With a frustrated huff, he ducks into the shadows inside the gaping tree trunk. _It shouldn't be so impossible to find_. He descends the steep stone stairs two at a time, mentally preparing the rant he’ll go on, the indignant demand for a redesign. It’s unbecoming of a prince to stand there poking like a fool at invisible buttons. A careless design flaw. He rounds the corner into the great yawning underground chamber of the Pit.

Next to the looming water wheel, the chaos of gears and pistons and tubing, Count Rugen looks very small. Humperdinck stops on the last step and watches silently as the Count twists and pulls at the array of knobs and suction cups before him. He has undressed from the waist up, his doublet and waistcoat piled in a thoughtless heap next to the desk. The torchlight reflects in the sweat that beads across his shoulder blades even in the underground chill. Humperdinck watches him stretch to reach a screw near the top of the wooden frame, watches the lean muscles of his back flex and strain, the candlelight throwing shadows across the pearly lines of ancient scars crisscrossing his spine. Humperdinck waits.

The Count turns away from the Machine and plucks up a quill from the desk. “Sire,” he greets in a monotone. He doesn’t glance up from the paper where he scrawls notes in his indecipherable shorthand.

Humperdinck steps to the floor and crosses the room in a slow swagger. “Tyrone, are you trying to seduce your ridiculous contraption? Your charm and personality not enough, you need to show a bit of skin?” He smirks.

Rugen looks up and narrows his eyes. His insolent reply burns unspoken in his expression. “It’s ready for the next phase of testing. You’re just in time. I need you to operate the lever; I can’t reach if I’m hooked up on the table.”

Humperdinck stops in his tracks. “Wait. You’re not attaching this insane heap of shit to _yourself_?”

“Indeed, yes, I am. There is the lever you’ll be operating. I will set the dial beforehand, and all you’ll need to do is –”

“Why don’t we test it on something else? A wild dog, or an R.O.U.S., I would be happy to hunt you an R.O.U.S. to torture.”

The Count drops the quill back into the inkwell and turns to the table, to the array of cups and wires laid out there. “I can’t get reliable self-reported data from a rodent, sire. As I was saying, that is the lever, all you’ll need to do is lift it to the first notch there, and then back down again at the conclusion of the experiment. You can manage that, yes?”

Humperdinck doesn’t answer. He watches Rugen assemble the pieces with a deft and sure touch, dexterous even with the cumbersome six-fingered glove. The Count attaches the cups to the wide leather straps, then glances back over his shoulder. His expression is impatient, expectant, blazing with an excitement that goes beyond academic curiosity. Humperdinck’s pulse quickens. He heaves a sigh and makes a show of rolling his eyes. “Yes, but if this kills you, I shall be very put out.”

A rare smile flickers across the Count’s face, and he sweeps back into his preparations with renewed vigor. “Excellent, excellent. So, you see, the straps will affix four of the suction cups here and here,” he says, gesturing to spots on his torso, “which is why I’ve removed my shirt. Two more cups will attach to – ”

“You ought to remove your breeches, too,” Humperdinck interrupts airily. Rugen stops talking and purses his lips together. “For the integrity of your experiment,” Humperdinck adds. “You wouldn’t want to pollute your data, of course.”

“Of course,” Rugen echoes. His tone is neutral, his expression inscrutable. He turns away from the Prince and undoes his waistband.

Humperdinck looks down at the desk and pretends to be riveted by the landslide of papers littered across its surface. The blueprints for the Machine and all its complicated components resemble the hieroglyphic alphabet of some lost civilization. He picks up one of the papers. It’s a page of notes from the Count’s endless research on pain – a rough anatomy sketch, words crammed together in an illegible scrawl. Humperdinck pretends to study the notes while he watches Rugen from behind his lowered eyelashes. The Count peels off his breeches and kicks off his boots, dumps everything into the pile with the other discarded clothes. He’s angled away from Humperdinck, but Humperdinck catches a quick glimpse of Rugen’s cock, flushed deep red and fully hard. Readying the Machine, anticipating the coming pain, is potent foreplay for the Count. Humperdinck drops the paper on the desk and approaches the table, the cups and the leather. His pulse quickens further.

Crossing his arms, Humperdinck leans back against one of the wood beams of the Machine’s towering frame, and he watches. Rugen’s movements are at once meticulous and hurried with a low burn of barely tethered fever. He unstops a glass bottle and pours some viscous liquid into his palm. Humperdinck leans in closer. “What in blazes is that?”

“Conductive gel,” Rugen says vaguely, not looking up from his task of smearing the cups and pressing them onto his skin. He tightens the anchoring straps and eases himself onto the table. “Mainly aloe and saline. Now, before the Machine is ready for general operation, I plan to outfit the table with wrist and ankle restraints.” He slips the leather headgear on, presses the cups to his temples. “Clearly, the average victim won’t be lying here quite so willingly.” He reclines back onto the table, adjusts the straps across his forehead and chin.

Humperdinck leans motionless against the wooden beam, his eyes on the Count. His heart races, his cock twitches. But he betrays none of it. _Why am I like this,_ he wonders, as he has again and again since boyhood. _Did Tyrone make me this way?_ He thinks back, as he often does in times like these, to the hot summer afternoons on the palace grounds, when he was smaller and weaker and always a few steps behind Tyrone. The handful of years that separated them seemed like decades when Tyrone bested him in every endeavor – fencing, riding, classroom lessons. It wasn’t until Tyrone first took him hunting that Humperdinck found where his superior talents lay.

He remembers the smell of the dry earth beneath them, the shade of the leafy canopy above them, the silence in the forest after they had captured their prey. They tracked that rabbit for hours, for miles – and it was Humperdinck who located the trail, Humperdinck who read the ground for clues unseen by anyone else. And now they had it, staked by its paws to the ground, alive and writhing. They knelt knee to knee before the hapless animal. _Look at its eyes_ , Tyrone breathed, his voice low and unfamiliar. _Watch it flinch, even before I make the cut. It knows what’s coming._ He held the point of the knife just above the rabbit’s fur a long moment more, before finally swiping it across its belly. The rabbit screamed.

Humperdinck floated on a different plane entirely, still high on the adrenaline of the hunt, still breathless with the thrill of his own success. _Did you see how I cornered it, Tyrone, did you see how I feinted and tricked it? Did you see how I knew exactly which way it would go?_

Tyrone made another cut, fully vivisecting it in one long, swift slice. _Watch, watch and you’ll see the exact moment when it realizes there’s no escape. Watch. There it is._

_But did you see when it went across the creek, how it tried to shake us on the other side all that ways down, but I found it, I found the trail, you didn’t think I could but I did, I did it._

_Yes,_ Tyrone conceded, _you did it. But watch, watch._ Tyrone pulled Humperdinck closer to him, so close he was nearly on Tyrone’s lap. In the midst of his cloud of happiness, Humperdinck faintly registered the hard bulge spearing his hip, and he grinded back onto it, centered his ass against it. Tyrone’s hand snaked around his waist, slipped into his breeches, and closed around his small erection. He closed his eyes.

 _No, watch, watch._ Tyrone’s hand stroked; Humperdinck could feel all six fingers skate over his cock. _Watch. You’re missing it._

 _I’m watching, I’m watching,_ Humperdinck babbled with his eyes still closed. _Jesus fucking Christ._

 _There will be a moment where it gives up completely, you can watch the will to fight just disappear. And then it will be gone._ Tyrone stroked faster, harder; Humperdinck rocked up into his touch and then ground back down again on the bulge of Tyrone’s cock against his ass. _Watch, watch._

 _Fuck,_ Humperdinck gasped.

_Watch._

Humperdinck shuddered and came, with a dry orgasm that left all his muscles twitching in its wake. Behind him, Tyrone let out a soft grunt as he pressed hard against him, and his warm seed soaked clear through Humperdinck’s breeches. In the silence, the rabbit died.

Now, Humperdinck watches the Count check each suction cup for proper placement and adhesion. To this day, he cannot hunt without thinking of young Tyrone’s hands touching him.   And when they meet like this in the Pit, or in his chambers, or in the royal carriage, he always sees the image of the writhing rabbit when he closes his eyes.

He clears his throat and stands up straighter. “Well? Are you ready?”

Rugen stops fidgeting with the straps and lets his arms drift down to his sides. “Yes.” His voice has taken on the same strange, low cadence it had that day in the forest. “Ready.”

Humperdinck moves to the lever and grasps the wooden handle. And then he stands there. He can still see Rugen’s face. _Look at its eyes. It knows what’s coming._ He drags the moment out just a breath longer than necessary, and then he pulls the lever.

The clunk of the wooden joint settling echoes through the room, its reverberations flitting alone across the rounded ceiling. Then the water begins to pour. The sound of it rushing down the narrow channel is ominous as thunder.   The water wheel groans to life and picks up speed, and the whole apparatus begins to gather enough power to move all the gears and belts and bellows. Everything builds slowly for the first few seconds. Humperdinck moves closer for a better view of Rugen’s face. _Watch, watch and you’ll see the exact moment when it realizes there’s no escape. Watch. There it is._ The Machine reaches full power.

At first the Count seems to fight it, keeping his body rigid, bracing against the pain. Humperdinck watches as the agony builds and builds, breaking across him like storm waves, twisting his impassive expression. His hands scrabble against the smooth surface of the table, searching for something to clutch. His knees tremble with the effort of staying locked and braced. The trembling spreads through every muscle and joint of his body. _There will be a moment where it gives up completely, you can watch the will to fight just disappear. And then it will be gone._ Rugen gasps and arches, and then he writhes.  

Humperdinck moves still closer, right up to the table below Rugen’s legs. The Count’s expression is a contradictory fusion of unbearable agony and exalted rapture. His cock is still as red and hard as before, perhaps harder still; it leaks a fine filament of precome threading from the tip down to his twisting torso. Humperdinck climbs onto the table.           

He doesn’t know if the coursing agony will mask any other sensations, but he doesn’t even care. He bends over the Count and runs his tongue across his cockhead, lapping up the precome as it keeps leaking. When he takes him deep into his mouth, Rugen’s hands reach blindly for his head, brushing against his hair, trying to make contact through the intense spasms. Against his tongue, Rugen's cock feels as though it’s buzzing with dangerous voltage. Humperdinck bobs up and down the swollen shaft, timing his movements as much as possible with the spasms and arches as the pain storms through him. It’s messy, awkward and strange, wondrous and terrifying. Humperdinck straightens up and finds the bottle Rugen used earlier on the suction cups, and he pulls his breeches down to free his aching erection.

The feel of the conductive gel sliding over his cock leaves him breathless. He gathers a handful and slicks it over Rugen’s asshole, slips a finger inside. Rugen is so tense, so tight, clamped down against the pain like the rest of his body. He can feel the Count struggling to hold himself still for him. He pins down his thrashing hips and shoves his cock inside, breaching the tensed ring of muscle in one ruthless thrust. The sound Rugen makes reminds him of the rabbit’s wail. He holds him fast and marvels at the strange spasms from within, the throes that seize around his cock like the Count is electrified, lightning-struck. He starts to move and knows instantly he won’t last long. He wants to hold off, but every spasm of pain that rolls through Rugen pulls him tighter and tighter around Humperdinck. It feels as though the Machine’s pistons and bellows are yanking the climax straight out of his cock. He gives in and lets it happen, spurt after spurt of come jetting out of him in relentless pounding ecstasy. “Fuck,” Humperdinck gasps.

He pulls out immediately; the Machine’s throbbing waves quickly transform from pleasure into discomfort. He kneels back and looks down at Rugen. The Count unscrews his face from its grimace of agony long enough to lock eyes with Humperdinck in a wordless plea. Humperdinck swipes his hand over his softening cock and smears the collection of come and conductive gel over Rugen’s red and dripping erection. He strokes and strokes as Rugen keeps twisting and arching. Finally Humperdinck leans himself over Rugen, his hand still moving over his cock even between the press of their bodies. His lips find the pale arc of his neck as Rugen throws his head back. Under his mouth thrums the warm pulse-point, beating fast and hard. Humperdinck bites down. Rugen cries out and presses hard up against him, and his overheated come pours over Humperdinck’s hand and soaks through his filigreed waistcoat down to his doublet, clear down to his skin.

Humperdinck pulls his mouth away from the Count’s neck and slides off the table. Trying not to trip over his breeches that bunch around his legs, he hurries to the lever and yanks it back down. The water cuts off. The wheel drifts to a stop. All the pistons and belts and bellows freeze and hover in their positions like ominous ghosts.  The room is silent again except for Humperdinck’s heavy breathing, Rugen’s tiny gasping moans. He moves back to the table and works the suction cups off Rugen’s temples, pulls the leather straps off his face. As Rugen’s eyes gradually regain focus, as his breathing slows and his moans fall silent, Humperdinck watches.

When the Count pulls himself up to a slumped sitting position, Humperdinck moves away from the table and saunters back toward the desk, refastening his clothes. He brushes against the sticky stain all along his front.   “How careless of you, do you see the mess you’ve left me?”

The Count looks up from the suction cups he’s detaching from his chest and gazes at the Prince for a long moment. Without a word he looks back down and resumes his efforts.

“I hope that was worth it. Did you get all the _data_ you desired?” He gives a little sneer as he brushes past the piles of research spread over the desk.

Rugen smiles. “Yes,” he breathes, scarcely above a whisper. “Oh yes.”

Humperdinck starts up the stone staircase, then stops and turns back around. “I almost forgot. I need you to fix that blasted secret knot. It’s impossible to find. Can you make it slightly less invisible?”

On the table beside him, Rugen lines up the leather straps and suction cups in a neat line. His hands are almost steady.   “I swear it will be done,” he murmurs.

Humperdinck turns and bounds up the steep stairs two at a time, back up to the forest above.


End file.
